Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Emily Bell @emilybell.bsky.social · 41m

the best thing publishers could be doing with their AI licensing deal money is spending it on people ….

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Emily Bell @emilybell.bsky.social · 45m

The sub prime technology crisis of 2025

Carl Quintanilla @carlquintanilla.bsky.social · 14h

NVIDIA and OpenAi:

Concerns that their “increasingly complex and interconnected web of business transactions is artificially propping up the trillion-dollar AI boom.“

@bloomberg.com $NVDA 👀
www.bloomberg.com/news/feature...

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Reposted by Emily Bell

Daniel Knowles @dlknowles.bsky.social · 13h

Good reporting on the South Shore raid from South Side weekly here.

Confirms one thing I was told but didn't put in my own piece because I didn't have a second source and it seemed too insane: border agents segregated arrested residents by race

southsideweekly.com/federal-agen...

Federal Agents Storm South Shore Building, Detaining Families and Children

Families were woken by flashbangs and helicopters as hundreds of federal agents raided their homes. Days later, neighbors are still searching for the missing.

southsideweekly.com

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Amy @lolennui.bsky.social · 21h

George Orwell’s Animal Crossing

Someone in a frog costume facing down a line of police in riot gear

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Maria Bustillos @mariabustillos.com · 18h

We'd be interested in talking about forming a consortium to fundraise for this, and to contribute our progress so far on ebook sales. I wrote about the dangers recently here:

www.cjr.org/analysis/the...

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Emily Bell @emilybell.bsky.social · 2d

State terror American style - @paulkrugman.substack.com.web.brid.gy . The autocratic race against time of Miller and co open.substack.com/pub/paulkrug...

State Terror, American Style

Forget about “soft autocracy”

open.substack.com

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Emily Bell @emilybell.bsky.social · 3d

I saw Geese three months ago, I told my class last year that I did not rate Ezra Klein as highly as many others*…. very disappointed nobody at Polymarket offers odds on this kind of thing

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Emily Bell @emilybell.bsky.social · 3d

Honored to have this conversation with @petergeoghegan.bsky.social - Britain’s most effective journalist on covering dark money, concentration of power and corruption…answer to ‘how fucked are we?’ was something along the lines of ‘more than we should be’

Peter Geoghegan @petergeoghegan.bsky.social · 3d

Can watch full video with @emilybell.bsky.social on Democracy for Sale’s YouTube channel

Starts with my killer opening question: ‘how fucked are we?’ 😂😬

youtu.be/5lXeFzrYwI8?...

How Trump is breaking the free press | Professor Emily Bell

YouTube video by Democracy for Sale

youtu.be

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Emily Bell @emilybell.bsky.social · 3d

I wonder what Ezra Klein thinks about Taylor Swift’s new album?

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Emily Bell @emilybell.bsky.social · 4d

If someone has not been seen in public for a few days and has nothing on their calendar, it’s always possible they are just a bit lazy

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Emily Bell @emilybell.bsky.social · 4d

Yes you were - though not necessarily just naive. It’s not as though there were not plenty of warnings about the risks

Anne Applebaum @anneapplebaum.bsky.social · 4d

President Macron:
“We were very naive to leave our public space to social media networks controlled by US or Chinese companies that don’t share our interests and not interested in survival of our democracies.”
www.youtube.com/watch?v=MggN...

French President Macron Speaks at German Unity Day Ceremony | WION LIVE

YouTube video by WION

www.youtube.com

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Emily Bell @emilybell.bsky.social · 4d

I was really moved by it - because of the association and the performance

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Emily Bell @emilybell.bsky.social · 4d

I know. My observations extend to my theatergoing companions in their forties .

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Emily Bell @emilybell.bsky.social · 4d

(Also nb - Gen Z /Millennials cannot sit still in a theater: cracking their necks, flexing as if at yoga, canoodling… and boomers loudly open sweets and provide running commentary ‘his boots hurt!’ : meanwhile sandwiched between are we Gen Xers… the silent generation)

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Emily Bell @emilybell.bsky.social · 4d

Waiting for Godot is about repetition, collective memory, futility, dissociation , dehumanization. And ultimately it is about resistance, compliance and the holocaust. Why them, why now, why this play made perfect sense…

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Emily Bell @emilybell.bsky.social · 4d

went to see @alexwinter.com and Keanu Reeves in Broadway Waiting for Godot. Bill and Ted were time travelers in Excellent Adventure - they literally had to learn from the past to progress in the present

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Emily Bell @emilybell.bsky.social · 5d

It is remarkable to me, (if not that surprising), that a hallmark of our times is the abandonment of rules and regulations over the fair operation of capitalism, and the brutal and arbitrary imposition of regulation over individual human freedoms

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Reposted by Emily Bell

ArtButMakeItSports @artbutmakeitsports.bsky.social · 5d

The Garden of Earthly Delights (detail), by Hieronymus Bosch, 1480-1505

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Jason Koebler @jasonkoebler.bsky.social · 5d

so the US government just forced a tech company to delete an app it doesn’t like, which is totally normal stuff

www.404media.co/iceblock-own...

ICEBlock Owner After Apple Removes App: ‘We Are Determined to Fight This’

Apple removed ICEBlock reportedly after direct pressure from Department of Justice officials. “I am incredibly disappointed by Apple's actions today. Capitulating to an authoritarian regime is never t...

www.404media.co

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Melissa Ryan @melissaryan.bsky.social · 5d

I always pay attention to what stories People Magazine and other consumer media outlets cover. That's how you can tell that something has broken through the usual political and news bubbles. This horrific Chicago story has broken through. people.com/ice-agents-o...

ICE Agents Rappel from Helicopter in Overnight Chicago Raid, Dragging Kids from Beds to U-Hauls

Overnight on Tuesday, Sept. 30, federal agents from different agencies raided an apartment building on the South Side of Chicago, pulling men, women and children — some of them allegedly naked — from ...

people.com

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404 Media @404media.co · 5d

New: Apple just removed ICEBlock, the app for reporting sightings of ICE, from its App Store after DOJ pressure. ICEBlock's developer tells 404 Media "we are determined to fight this."

"Capitulating to an authoritarian regime is never the right move."

www.404media.co/iceblock-own...

ICEBlock Owner After Apple Removes App: ‘We Are Determined to Fight This’

Apple removed ICEBlock reportedly after direct pressure from Department of Justice officials. “I am incredibly disappointed by Apple's actions today. Capitulating to an authoritarian regime is never t...

www.404media.co

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Emily Bell @emilybell.bsky.social · 5d

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Columbia Journalism Review @columjournreview.bsky.social · 6d

Scenes from Immigration Court in New York’s Federal Plaza: @tilleckert.com spent two weeks reporting from the twelfth-floor hallways, where ICE agents have had charged encounters with immigrants and reporters. Interview with @riddhisetty.bsky.social www.cjr.org/getting-the-...

Scenes from immigration court in New York’s Federal Plaza.

Till Eckert spent two weeks reporting from the twelfth-floor hallways, where ICE agents have had charged encounters with immigrants and reporters.

www.cjr.org

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Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez @ocasio-cortez.house.gov · 7d

This moment is a test. Donald Trump wants us to blink first and hand him over power.

We have too much to save to give in. Protecting the American people is too important a task for us to give up before anything even starts.

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Brian Merchant @bcmerchant.bsky.social · 7d

1) This is some pretty remarkable shade thrown at the big AI companies by a startup that's hiring away their researchers

2) That those researchers are giving up millions to do this indicates a rising level of discomfort with OpenAI/Meta/Google/etc's moral standing

www.nytimes.com/2025/09/30/t...

Dr. Agarwal is among more than 20 researchers who have left their work at Meta, OpenAI, Google DeepMind and other big A.I. projects in recent weeks to join a new Silicon Valley start-up, Periodic Labs. Many of them have given up tens of millions of dollars — if not hundreds of millions — to make the move.

As the A.I. labs chase amorphous goals like superintelligence and a similar concept called artificial general intelligence, Periodic is focused on building A.I technology that can accelerate new scientific discoveries in areas like physics and chemistry.

“The main objective of A.I. is not to automate white-collar work,” said Liam Fedus, one of the start-up’s founders. “The main objective is to accelerate science.”

Mr. Fedus was among the small team of OpenAI researchers who created the online chatbot ChatGPT in 2022. He left OpenAI in March to found Periodic Labs with Ekin Dogus Cubuk, who previously worked at Google DeepMind, the tech giant’s primary A.I. lab.

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